Mixed fortunes for Jersey Shore residents?

This Oct. 24, 2014 photo shows the exterior of the Trump Taj Mahal Casino resort in Atlantic City. The partial collapse of Atlantic City’s gaming economy might be a big drag on southern New Jersey, and depress the incomes of Ocean County residents whose jobs were tied to the city.(Photo: AP)

A year of deadly disease outbreaks and mysterious plane crashes is finally over. In 2014, Russia annexed Crimea, the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant gained territory in the Middle East, and new business and tourism pathways were opened between Cuba and the United States.

But now that the New Year is here, experts and psychics have placed their best guesses on the events that lie ahead in 2015. They say New Jersey is in for a year of mixed fortunes. This year will likely bring more tourist money to the Jersey Shore, more jobs to North Jersey residents, new technology to classrooms, new medical breakthroughs, and political scandal, they say.

More jobs?

New Jersey is in the career doldrums compared to the rest of the nation, but Wells Fargo economist Michael Wolf thinks a slow but steady recovery is well underway across the state.

“I would cautiously say that yes, things look like they’re picking up a little bit,” said Wolf. “New Jersey is extra hard (to predict) because there are so many people commuting outside of the state to work.”

Not all job areas will experience growth. Construction has slowed at the Jersey Shore since Sandy rebuilding efforts have neared completion, he said. Residential construction permits also remained unchanged from a year earlier, he added.

But as the nation’s economy rebounds, the economist expects tourist-dependent industries at the Shore to benefit. Economic growth in other parts of the country may trickle back to the Shore as more tourists head east this year and boost the local economy, Wolf said.

However, the partial collapse of Atlantic City’s gaming economy might be a big drag on southern New Jersey, and depress the incomes of Ocean County residents whose jobs were tied to the city.

Despite the uncertainty, Barbara Mackey, a Toms River-based psychic medium, believes the Jersey Shore will see better times this year. She thinks Sandy’s devastation has set the stage for an economic rebirth.

“It had to be destroyed in order to be rebuilt,” she said. “It was almost like the phoenix rising out of the ashes.”

Mackey also senses that new treatments will be discovered in 2015, and the source of these future discoveries may aquatic.

“I feel that the ocean holds a lot of promise for healing people,” she said. “Hopefully it won’t be so polluted that we wouldn’t be able to use the ocean anymore.”

If the ocean fails to deliver new medical treatments, Prabhas Moghe, a distinguished professor at Rutgers University and research director at Rutger’s School of Engineering–Biomedical and Health Sciences Alliances & Partnerships, has high hopes for microtechnology and miniaturization.

Instead of relying on in-hospital laboratories for tests, technology may enable doctors and nurses in far-flung reaches of the world to carry portable test kits that deliver quick results. Moghe said there is a high demand for devices that are small and do not require refrigeration — equipment that could easily test for pathogens like the paralyzing virus that affected children in the U.S. last year and the deadly Ebola virus in West Africa.

The technology may eliminate long waits for biopsy results, and could deliver immediate results during surgeries. It could help doctors make speedier decisions and eliminate subsequent surgeries, Moghe said.

“We’re excited about it,” he said. “You don’t have to take out a part of the body and send it out to a path lab.”

The technology is still being tested on animals, and human trials have not yet begun.

Moghe expects that more drugs that are currently delivered through injection will be made into pill forms. The challenge in the past has been preserving drug properties through the digestive track. Some medicines, like insulin, can only be delivered through injection. But Moghe believes this drug and others may soon be available in pill form.

With injectable medications, “compliance is an issue. Quality of care is an issue,” he said. Being able to deliver these medications in pills instead would “have a huge impact on the quality of life, especially in the U.S.,” he added.

The New Year will be another year of great change for New Jersey students. This year, students in third through twelfth grades will take a new, more rigorous standardized test called the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers. They have prepared for this for years, with schools implementing more strenuous course work since 2010.

The new tests are computer-based, leading to a recent swarm of electronics and digital gadgets in schools. Tablets and interactive white boards have become every day devices in classrooms.

Classroom furniture might change as well through this evolution. More schools are experimenting with making the best use of minimal space as new programs are adopted, said Kathleen A. Froriep, an associate professor in the School of Education at Georgian Court University.

“With more and more school districts offering full-day kindergarten, parents will be surprised to see classrooms that don’t look familiar,” Froriep wrote in an email to the Asbury Park Press. “Maybe bunk-mats for nap time?”

Froriep expects new curriculum shifts that emphasize nonfiction reading will trigger authors and publishers to flood the market with new material.

Some of that will be “thought-provoking” and “well-written,” she said, but “more inane and inaccurate materials will be provided, too.”

Powerful falls?

Mackey, the psychic, expects more of the nation’s powerful politicians to fall on difficult times in the public eye in 2015. She believes President Barack Obama and Governor Chris Christie are close to be embroiled in two serious, but unrelated, scandals. The scandals, she says, might be enough to derail any lingering presidential aspirations for Christie and could lead Obama’s opponents to call for his impeachment.

Though Mackey believes futures are bleak for those in Obama’s and Christie’s camps, she said things will look brighter for residents of Monmouth and Ocean counties.

“Within the next couple of years, the Jersey Shore is going to be better than ever,” she said.

There’s no storms the likes of Sandy in her vision of the future, no catastrophes or major disasters.

“There was so much darkness,” said Mackey. “(Now) there’s going to be a new energy… more positive energy. Newer buildings, newer restaurants.”